I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Another Record

Editor’s note: An update from the author has been added to this article on September 20, 2012.

Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year). Please, nobody tell the mainstream media or they might have to retract some stories and admit they are misrepresenting scientific data.

National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website last month claiming, “Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice.”

NPR failed to mention anywhere in its article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012.

Indeed, none of the mainstream media are covering this important story. A Google News search of the terms Antarctic, sea ice and record turns up not a single article on the Antarctic sea ice record. Amusingly, page after page of Google News results for Antarctic sea ice record show links to news articles breathlessly spreading fear and warning of calamity because Arctic sea ice recently set a 33-year low.

Sea ice around one pole is shrinking while sea ice around another pole is growing. This sure sounds like a global warming crisis to me.

Update: To provide more perspective on global warming and Antarctica, I would like to update this column with some additional information:

As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains, new data show ice mass is accumulating on the Antarctic continent as well as in the ocean surrounding Antarctica. The new data contradict an assertion by global warming alarmists that the expanding Antarctic sea ice is coming at the expense of a decline in Antarctic continental ice.

The new data also add context to sensationalist media stories about declining ice in small portions of Antarctica, such as portions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula (see here, for example). The mainstream media frequently publish stories focusing on ice loss in these two areas, yet the media stories rarely if ever mention that ice is accumulating over the larger area of East Antarctica and that the continent as a whole is gaining snow and ice mass.

Interestingly, a new NASA study finds Antarctica once supported vegetation similar to that of present-day Iceland.

“The southward movements of rain bands associated with a warmer climate in the high-latitude southern hemisphere made the margins of Antarctica less like a polar desert, and more like present-day Iceland,” a co-author of the NASA study reports.

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It appears that the author, James Taylor, missed several important sessions in his Journalism 101 class. I noticed he didn’t mention a single, much less multiple or detailed sources for his story. Journalism 101 demands even freshman reporters answer the all-too simple question, “Says who?”

Well, if you take the trouble to squirrel after either of his only two web links, you find that he’s supposedly gathering all this data from “Real Science,” a right wing “ignore-the-real-scientists” web site. These folks are disputing and twisting the data from The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). You can visit both to decide which you’d rather believe.

The Real Science page web banner shows a picture of Toto and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz . . . how appropriate. Apparently neither the dog, the girl, or Forbes in this case, is in Kansas anymore. Also appropriately, is a quote at the top of their page that reads: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” – Richard Feynman

Now I’m wondering if the National Enquirer should be worried about being under-classed with its reporting authority.

The majority of Climate Science experts conclude that the data as a whole points to a specific conclusion. Obama’s statements about the science has nothing to do with the science. He doesn’t get to decide; however, most climatologists agree that the science is settled.

Thanks, you spelled it out better than me. It’s pretty said to see a major publication not even use a primary source for their articles. The anti-science crowd is like a incestuous ring of web sites that all link to each other.

It appears that the author, James Taylor, missed several important sessions in his Journalism 101 class. I noticed he didn’t mention a single, much less multiple or detailed source for his revelation story. Every Journalism 101 freshman can tell you the number one question for reporters to answer is the simple question, “Says who?” Where’s the attribution? The verifiability?

Well, if you take the trouble to squirrel after either of his only two web links, you find that he’s supposedly gathering all this “factual” data from “Real Science,” a blatant right-wing “ignore-the-real-scientists” web site. These folks are disputing and twisting the data from The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). You can visit both to decide which you’d rather believe.

The Real Science page web banner shows a picture of Toto and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz . . . how appropriate. Apparently neither the dog, the girl, or Forbes in this case, is in Kansas anymore. Also appropriately, is a quote at the top of their page that reads: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” – Richard Feynman

Now I’m wondering if the National Enquirer should be worried about being under-classed with its reporting authority.